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Transcendental Art Billy Hutchinson a Troubles Archive Essay

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Transcendental Art Billy Hutchinson a Troubles Archive Essay Transcendental Art A Troubles Archive Essay Billy Hutchinson Cover image: BELUM.U1934 Ulster Past and Present (1931) William Conor 1881-1968 © The Estate of William Conor Collection Ulster Museum About the Author Billy Hutchinson was a member of the Ulster Volunteer Force and served sixteen years in prison for paramilitary activity. While in prison he was instrumental in negotiations with the prison authorities and the British Government to bring about an end to violence and the release of all political prisoners. When Hutchinson was released he continued to work with the Ulster Volunteer Force to bring about a ceasefire in October 1994. He entered community work in 1990 as the director of the Springfield Intercommunity Development Project, a cross community forum which brought together Republican and Loyalist communities to explore ways to address social issues using community relations, community development and conflict resolution. Hutchinson was elected to the Legislative Assembly in 1998, representing North Belfast. He is also a former member of the Belfast City Council, representing the Oldpark electoral area for two Council terms. He has now returned to the community as the coordinator of the Mount Vernon Community Development Forum and has received accolades for his work in a range of community capacity building programmes and work with excluded communities. He has also worked in a number of countries, most recently Iraq, examining the role of armed groups. Billy Hutchinson is a Social Science graduate and holds a post graduate diploma in Town Planning. He was a lay member of the Department of Education and Training Inspectorate and had responsibility with his colleagues for inspections of all education sectors in Northern Ireland. Transcendental Art This is not a piece about Loyalist art per se. Rather, it is a narrative that explains Loyalism’s contribution to art in all its forms and how art influenced the thinking of incarcerated Loyalists. My thinking, which underpins agreeing to write this piece, is that it is important that this narrative gets its rightful position in the annals of history and has the opportunity to challenge stereotypical views of Loyalism. The contemporary prison tradition of Loyalists originates with the incarceration of Gusty Spence et al in 1966. This is the starting point for this essay because it provides the historical backdrop to the art my comrades and I encountered while incarcerated as political prisoners. Having developed an understanding of the prison system which encompassed their physical, psychological and political wellbeing, Spence created a strategy and delivery plan that would empower those incarcerated. Part of this plan was to move prisoners away from institutionalisation and towards a military-style camp whereby we were encouraged to integrate the military training of drilling, lectures, and so on, with participation in some form of handicrafts. Spence and others had learned the skills that allowed them to produce handicrafts, which in turn allowed them to pass on the skills to the influx of loyalist prisoners who flooded the Gaol from 1969. As well as cascading skills he was encouraging a learning environment, both informally and formally. He had created an environment in the Victorian Gaol which he later transferred to Long Kesh when all political prisoners were transferred there. Long Kesh provided Spence more scope to deliver his strategy as we were no longer in a Victorian prison but were now in a prisoner of war camp with the introduction of Special Category status, which drew a distinction between politically-motivated prisoners and criminals. Spence’s notion of cultural expression through art was rooted in the work of the famous Shankill Road artist, William Conor. Conor, who was known as the ‘People’s Artist’ for his expression of life in Ulster society, lived for a long time in the area of Crumlin Road Gaol. Spence was inspired by the works of Conor and by the artistic elite who revered his work for the artistic expression of life in our society in peace and war. Consequently, he had murals painted on the cubicle walls inside the huts in each of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF)/Red Hand Commando (RHC) compounds, as a matter of pride in our heritage, not just decoration. These murals were designed to represent our past, present and future, as well as our political expression about our country. Many represented the reality of life within the Loyalist community: the poverty; the smudge-face labourers in their cloth caps who trudged home from the factories; a pawn shop on the Old Lodge Road, close to the birthplace of Conor. Even power and ambition found their way onto our walls: Stormont and City Hall; Belfast City Centre with the old red double-decker buses from the ’60s, also adorned the walls of our illustrious Art Gallery. Our military history and traditions provided additional inspiration. All the huts housing UVF/RHC volunteers were named after Battle Honours of the 36th Ulster Division. When I moved to St Quentin in compound 21, the mural was a 1913 UVF depiction of opposition to Home Rule. We were surrounded by art telling the stories of our culture and these influences formed the art gallery in which we lived. My favourite mural was one inspired by the British anti-war poet, Siegfried Sassoon. Suicide in the Trenches depicts a UVF volunteer split down the middle by a bolt of lightning. Half of him depicts a 36th Ulster Division soldier under heavy fire in a rainsoaked WW1 trench. The other half shows a ’70s volunteer incarcerated behind barbed wire and over-shadowed by watch towers. Sassoon’s poem was emblazoned underneath. You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye Who cheer when soldier lads march by Sneak home and pray you’ll never know The hell where youth and laughter go. Later, following my release, I wanted to explore Conor’s works and was pleasantly surprised to discover Ulster Past and Present as part of the Ulster Museum collection. I was drawn to this piece which depicts Celtic warriors walking past Neolithic stones at the Giants Ring and on the other side women draped in shawls and men in cloth caps going to work. This reminded me of my favourite piece in Long Kesh, as it told the story of Ulster past and present. Spence ensured that those under his command acted and behaved like prisoners of war and instilled in us that we were ambassadors for the UVF/RHC. He taught us to argue our story by using any methods of expression possible, which included narratives in writing and painting in the same way that William Conor expressed working-class life in his drawings and paintings. It was Conor’s influence on Spence that paved the way for our depiction of the life of Ulster Society in a country not just divided by class but also by religion and the politics of identity. All of the aforementioned was captured in the paintings in Long Kesh, not primarily for the aesthetics but for the narrative of the Loyalist place in history. By 1973 handicraft workshops conducted by people like Spence had taught new prisoners the rudiments of leatherworking. At this time, there were no templates or stencils and much of the work was done by hand. The more able artists drew what you required on the leather and people with good handwriting skills crafted the alphabets. Early leatherwork from the period 1972-73 is exclusively in that style. Later, when the crafts became more prolific, stencils, specialist tools and stamps would be imported from Canada. Even then, the tools and materials were expensive and not everyone could afford to have them. In the very early days of the compounds, the deficit was addressed by a communal approach to handicrafts, again in keeping with the new thinking from Spence. This included skins of leather and the associated tools being paid for out of the central welfare funds, prior to mass orders being produced with the intention of raising contributions for the compounds’ welfare fund. One of the earliest and most accessible forms of prison art was the production of hankies. All that was required were the hankies, a biro and a set of felt tip pens. Images on the hankies ranged from poems to pop groups, from political messages to memorials, and everything in between. By far the most popular image to appear on hankies was a drawing of the three Scottish soldiers who were early IRA victims. Although the idea of all handicrafts being communal still existed, connection to the outside world was via the Orange Cross organisation. This welfare group, dedicated to the well-being of UVF prisoners, gathered orders and distributed and sold handicraft items on the outside to assist those on the other side of the wire. Many such items became much sought after, particularly in Scotland and places like Liverpool and Preston in the north west of England. Within the prison, prison guards and soldiers had a great interest in many of the handicrafts and would insist that whatever was being made carried the UVF insignia or the Long Kesh name to show its authenticity. One of the most sought after items in Magilligan Camp was a pin board which had been specially designed to depict a compound with Nissen huts and which was adorned with genuine clippings of barbed wire taken from the compound fence, usually in full view of the prison guards. The influence of art during my incarceration opened a creative vista that I never had before and gave me a different angle to bring to my practice as a Community Development worker. Reflecting my appreciation of how art can induce transformation, I have engaged Community Artists to work with residents to identify social problems and to describe the solutions, expressed here by Anne-Sophie Morrisette: The inclusion of artists – many of whom, while Belfast residents, have never visited Mount Vernon Estate – has had the benefit of transforming outsiders’ perceptions of the area.
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